The Many Inspirations of Cowboy Bebop Director Shinichiro Watanabe

One of anime's most beloved creators takes us behind the scenes on his many iconic projects.

By
Julian Rizzo-Smith

Shinichiro Watanabe is an anime legend; a name mentioned in the same breath as esteemed creators like Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo. He’s best known for creating Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy, a number of projects for Animatrix, and recently, an anime short set in the Blade Runner universe. Speaking to IGN at Melbourne’s Madman Anime Festival, the western-inspired creator shared stories behind the creation of some of his beloved works, his inspirations, and opinions on live-action adaptations.

A defining quality of Watanabe’s series’ is that they’re heavily inspired by western music. He first came up with the idea behind Cowboy Bebop, the action series about a spaceship crew of bounty hunters, after listening to 1940s blues and creating a story around a soundtrack composed by Yoko Kanno (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). Characters like Faye and her struggle to find somewhere to belong, and Jet’s hard-boiled past as a detective, came to Watanabe after listening to My Funny Valentine and Led Zeppelin's Black Dog. The character design of Spike was based on Yusaku Matsuda, a famous Japanese movie star known for playing suave charismatic action heroes.

Over the 26 episode long adventure, the Bebop’s crew - a space cowboy, an ex-detective, a woman with a mysterious past, a child genius and a genetically engineered corgi - went on a multi-genre voyage. Watanabe paid homage to a variety of pop culture icons over the run of the show, from Alien, Taxi Driver and Desperado through to the eclectic western cowboy trope and music from the Rolling Stones. Nearly 20 years since the series debuted, Cowboy Bebop is still beloved by fans across the world and recognised as one of the greatest anime TV series of all time. It’s an example of Watanabe’s directorial ability to blend very different genres into an incredible visceral and stylistic creation. In Cowboy Bebop, 1940s jazz meets the classic western cowboy, sci-fi space combat and Hong Kong action film aesthetics.

A series of stills displayed at the Cowboy Bebop Exhibition at Madman Anime Festival 2017.

“When creating Cowboy Bebop,” Watanabe tells me, “I thought it would be more interesting if I added different types of elements together to create something that was completely new.”

“With Samurai Champloo, we were thinking of listening to hip hop music, watching a lot of Japanese style traditional dramas - old style dramas - that was the sort of image I had when putting those ideas together,” he continues. “With Space Dandy, you’ve obviously got your image of the space and 80s music, and blending them together is how I created it.”

In an attempt to merge those two ideas together, Watanabe instructed the show’s composers to use musical instruments that predated the 1980s, grounding the musical tone in a camp 80s feel.

“I had a lot of people tell me Space Dandy was like Guardians of the Galaxy,” he adds. “However, they were actually created around the same time and after I got to watch Guardians of the Galaxy after Dandy was finished and completed, I realised, ‘oh yeah, they actually have a similar feeling, they’re actually quite similar.’”

Speaking to fans during a Director Insights and Cowboy Bebop: Behind the Series panel, Watanabe shared that originally, Cowboy Bebop was created in partnership with Namco Bandai to promote their toy and figurine line. The company planned to use the series to push a new range of spaceship figurines, so Watanabe was told to incorporate scenes with spaceship combat into the story. Namco Bandai didn’t have faith in the project, however, and disbanded that partnership after Sunrise finished producing the first four episodes. This, Watanabe explains, is why space combat is barely featured in later episodes.

IGN: Something I’ve always wanted to ask about after having watched the series is after Spike leaves the Bebop, what happens to Faye and Jet?

Shinichiro Watanabe: [Laughs] Okay. Challenging question. I’ve never really clearly stated what happens to Faye or Jet in any official situation. What happens to them after Spike leaves the ship? Don’t also forget that in the last scene of the series, Spike could be sleeping.

Super suave Spike.

IGN: [Laughs] I didn’t think that. Do you think that Faye and Jet would continue on as partners or go their separate ways? Of course with Faye, a big part of her character arc is finding a place she belongs and feeling like the Bebop crew is her family.

Shinichiro Watanabe: I guess you could say I don’t think they’d get along very well.

IGN: Each of your series always follows a core cast of three, there’s always two men who clash and a woman who tags along. Is that a conscientious decision or something you gravitate towards when storyboarding?

Shinichiro Watanabe: It’s kind of subconscious but don’t forget in Cowboy Bebop, there’s four of them.

IGN: Yeah, there’s Ed as well. He - or Her - I’m still not quite sure...

Shinichiro Watanabe: Its gender is meaningless, we don’t need it.

IGN: Well actually, I’d like to quickly ask about that. Why did you decide for Ed to be non-binary and have no gender, or have their gender be ambiguous?

Shinichiro Watanabe: I wanted to create a character that surpasses humanity. I personally think that he might not even be human, someone from outer space.

IGN: What about Ein? Why did you decide for him to be a corgi?

Shinichiro Watanabe: I had a very strong request from the scenario writer that she really loved corgis and we had to have a corgi. She told me there’s no way of doing any other type of dogs, it had to be a corgi.

Watanabe’s work has strong western roots so it’s no surprise that he grew up influenced by western films. When developing the character of Spike, Watanabe based his fluid movement on Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do martial art, and his suave demeanor on film noir protagonists and Clint Eastwood.

“The anime that inspired me the most and one that I probably have influence from is the very first series of Lupin the 3rd,” Watanabe says, drawing comparisons between Lupin and Spike. “I’m very drawn to Enter the Dragon and Dirty Harry, too. They definitely inspire me. And, of course, Blade Runner.”

"The anime that inspired me the most and one that I probably have influence from is the very first series of Lupin the 3rd. I'm very drawn to Enter the Dragon and Dirty Harry, too... and, of course, Blade Runner." - Shinichiro Watanabe.

“When it was released in the 80s in Japan, Blade Runner was actually a series that influenced the Japanese media very much so,” he explains. “I assume that everyone in the anime industry has seen Blade Runner at some point. Pretty much all of the special effects style sci-fi movies or series out there starting looking a lot like Blade Runner.”

Being a fan of the original dystopian sci-fi cult-classic, Watanabe was ecstatic to direct an anime prequel to the Blade Runner 2049 sequel called Blade Runner BlackOut 2022.

“The offer originally came from [the] America[n] [studio] themselves,” he recalls. “When I was first given the offer to do the prequel… I really like the character from the first Blade Runner movie, Roy Batty, so I really wanted to make a story for him. However, the owner of the whole entire franchise wanted to have something that connects the first and second films, and because Roy dies in the first movie, I wasn’t able to pass that through. It was a rejected idea.”

“Having discussions with the producer on Blade Runner 2049, they used a word called the BlackOut incident, which was not mentioned a lot. They decided it was probably a better idea if we related this new 2049 to that particular incident. That’s what happened.”

In the Blade Runner universe, the BlackOut incident was an event that occurred well before the events of Blade Runner 2049, in which an EMP explosion caused a global blackout with enormous destructive effects on the world. Watanabe’s anime short follows a ragtag group of replicants on a suicide mission to destroy an industrial facility which acts as a catalyst for the event.

“The Director [of Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve] told me, ‘definitely do this incident,’” he continues. “‘We’d love a short on it.’ We decided that we’d do this particular incident and from there, they pretty much gave the rest to us to decide on the finer details. We created the finer details on what we believed would work and received an okay from them to go ahead with the project. That’s how it occurred.”

Even then, when asked if this meant he had creative control on the project, Watanabe tilted his head and winced, “there were many troubles but [working with western studios] is usually a hard scene.”

“In a general sense, most of the time, the directors and creators are really great people,” he explains, “however, as we were going through the project, so-and-so here or so-and-so there or all the other people around added their own ideas. That is what usually causes the trouble, I believe… Even with the Animatrix project, technically speaking, there was more trouble that occurred there.”

In the last few years, the anime and western film industries have converged with Hollywood producing live-action adaptations of Ghost in the Shell, Death Note and soon, Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name. Despite admitting he hadn’t seen the former two western projects, with Hollywood adapting Cowboy Bebop into a live-action TV series, I was curious to know what Watanabe thought of this new relationship.

“In my personal opinion, if the live-action adaptation is able to bring out the good points of what was part of the anime or original manga series - if they’re able to keep that alive - then I think it’s a good point,” he frankly explains. “If they’re actually adapting it and spoiling what was particularly good about those series or the good thing about being in animation or manga, then I don’t think that’s really a great thing.”

IGN: I just want to quickly bounce back to the Cowboy Bebop live-action. Hollywood are now adapting it into a live-action TV series, how involved are you with that?

Shinichiro Watanabe: It’s not quite decided yet. We’re actually currently in discussions of whether I will be involved or not be involved. However, it is seen that the staff that are going to work with the project really respects the original animation. They’re going to try and bring as much of the animation as possible - you can’t really say anything until it’s actually done but that’s currently the discussion.

IGN: Has the studio decided on who will play Spike or if not, who is someone you think would do a good job?

Shinichiro Watanabe: It doesn’t seem like they’ve decided on anybody yet. It sounds like they’re still in the middle of casting the main roles. In fact, there’s been a number of times we’ve talked about adapting it into a live-action however it’s been stopped several times. The project’s just halted. I’m not quite sure how this one will go this time.

Watanabe has a very extensive and diverse portfolio, including directing a series of animated advertisements for Nike starring Lebron James, not to mention Terror in Resonance, an intense cyber-crime drama about a group of teen terrorists. The latter is darker than his other work despite following a younger cast; a decision he says was based on trying to aim towards a younger generation.

“If you’ve been working in this industry for quite some time, you find you start to mature,” he recalls. “You always want to make something that seems more stable but I wanted to remember back to my younger days. [When storyboarding Terror in Resonance,] I thought back to those days where I was sort of still maturing.”

“In Japan, there’s a period of your teens in your second of year of middle school - called chuuni - where you start imagining and drifting off in your mind,” he continues. “That concept was something I had to think back to for when I was in that age group in my teens. [Terror in Resonance] was what I would’ve been like in my chuuni days.”

“I wanted to make something that resonates with that, therefore there was a tendency to have a lot of younger staff. A lot of the cast are around 20 years old. I wanted to create something that from a ten to 19 years old perspective because they have their own unique perspective. That was definitely something I was trying to challenge for.”

Some of the awesome sketches that were on display at the Cowboy Bebop Exhibition at Madman Anime Festival 2017.

“There is the view in Japan that in the past ten years, there’s a tendency for production companies to rely on sales of a Bluray product, and then move forward towards another series or new project,” he explains. “If moe cutesy style is going to sell, then it’s the only style of anime that will be approved for production. The ones that we would consider more challenging or fun to create would not be accepted.”

“However, if that is going to change, I don’t have a problem with it at all. Looking at the current market, we don’t know which way it’ll go, it’s hard to say. For example, if we’re going back to Terror in Resonance, there was actually a case where for about five years the project was pending and we couldn’t get approval. If this is going to change anything and if projects will be moved on faster then that’s a very good thing.”

Since directing Blade Runner BlackOut 2022, Shinichiro Watanabe has begun planning a new series with Studio Bones, the studio made up of ex-Cowboy Bebop Studio Sunrise staff members and behind some of the best action anime adaptations: My Hero Academia, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100. Watanabe is currently travelling around the world for inspiration for the new project, admiring the architecture and live music scene of Melbourne, Australia, before in true Watanabe fashion, creating a series that promises to feature heavy musical roots. Other than that, we don’t know much yet, and Watanabe refused to give any details.

One interesting tidbit he did tell fans, however, was that he had once directed a series based on tango music but the project was halted before he could complete it. He admits that if you ever see an original anime series in the future with a strong tango-theme, it might be the one he was involved in.

Since Cowboy Bebop, Shinichiro Watanabe has had an incredible influence on anime and pop culture, much in the same way Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion has. What started as a promotional program for a new line of Namco Bandai toys has become one of the most unique and mesmerising series to come out of Japan. There is no doubt that this Space Cowboy has left a mark on the animation industry, and whether that will translate to a western live-action TV series is for only time to tell.

Julian Rizzo-Smith is a freelance writer reporting on video games, anime and pop culture. You can read his thoughts on bell peppers and beef on Twitter.